King’s Quest Lives On in Fan-Made Sequel

The first episode of The Silver Lining, a sequel to the classic adventure game series created for free by a team of fans, was released on Saturday. The PC game is available at no cost.

The classic series that helped take the graphic adventure genre to popularity on personal computers has laid dormant for quite a while. Like most of Sierra’s old properties, the rights to King’s Quest are currently held by Activision Blizzard. The game publisher gave its blessing to the project, allowing the developer to release the game without fear of legal reprisal.

The first episode is quite brief. It’s little more than the introduction to the game’s story — King Graham’s children Alexander and Rosella have been placed under an evil curse, and the aging king must again don his stylish adventurer’s tights and feathered cap, collecting an inventory full of items that can be combined in such a way as to make everything alright again.

The production quality is significantly higher than I expected for a game put together by a group of volunteers. Many of them are professional game developers — project director Cesar Bittar used to work for Sam & Max creator Telltale Games, for example.

Everything’s quite a bit jankier than a Telltale production would be — the voice work is shaky, the dialogue often leaden — but it’s all quite playable for fans of the genre, and quite frankly it’s better than some fully professionally produced PC adventure games I’ve played recently.

Silver Lining clearly has potential, although it’s a bit disappointing that it didn’t quite get off on the right foot. The first episode has exactly one puzzle to solve, and the rest is clicking through dialogue and watching cut scenes.

Still — you can’t beat the price. And fans who’ve been waiting for over a decade for King’s Quest to return will be happy to see their favorite characters back in action, crafted by people who are as into the games as they are.

Developer Phoenix Online says that the following four installments will be released throughout 2010.